Photo Via MKE Studio Tour - mkestudiotour.com
Sasi Chambers' Spring Awakening Tarpage in MKE Studio Tour
For artist Sasi Chambers, making is the magic; creation is the chemistry. She specializes in an art form entirely her own: “tarpage,” a portmanteau she also coined, blending“tarp” and “collage.”
Her tarpages are as vibrant, dynamic and layered as she is—using polyvinal tarps she finds out-of-use and out-of-doors as a base, she layers duct tape, permanent marker designs and hand-sewn beads and sequins to create unorthodox worlds with unorthodox materials.
Chambers moved to Milwaukee in 2023 after a successful career as a public art installationist in Boise, Idaho. On Oct. 3-4, she will open her makerspace as a participating artist in the MKE Studio Tour, inviting Milwaukee to see her art publicly for the first time since her move.
Visitors to her studio over the weekend can expect an eclectic, sparkling display of Chambers’ tarpages—a body of work that has been growing for more than a decade. As one moves through the room, the tarpages' iconography (as Chambers calls it) will jump out in full, technicolor force: raindrops, “flame drops,” large soulful eyes, lightning, snakes and other animals, “weird clouds,” houses and trees.
“I’ve always been drawn to the less functional, more interesting things; to colors and patterns. It’s an innate part of me that I can’t quite explain,” she said.
Chambers doesn’t trace the tarpages’ iconography or themes to one root source. Rather, she draws inspiration from the weather, environmental disasters like Hurricane Katrina, Indigenous motifs and cultural productions from around the world. She says she enjoys when people find their own meanings in her art. Because many additions to her body of work were born out of public art commissions, each has a unique history of creation, foundation of inspiration and essence of iteration.
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Chambers’ inaugural tarpage series was created for the Treefort Music Festival in Boise, where her vision for a giant string of papel picado—colorful, intricately cut banners rooted in Mexican folk art—won her the installation spot. The series did not originally include marker patterns, sequins or beads, but when they returned to her after hanging for six months, she was inspired to add those elements. Here, tarpage was born. Another tarpage was created for a Black Elk Vision show. Black Elk was a Lakota leader born in 1863 along the Little Power River (present-day Wyoming) who had prophetic visions about healing and peace, while the U.S.’ government and military persecuted his people and land. The elements of the piece—horses, rainbows, eyes, and red trees growing from the water—reference Black Elk’s visions.
Smaller tarpages, “tarpitos, and smaller ones still, “tarpititos,” will be on sale to visitors. “I joke that I named it tarpage in part because it rhymes with garbage, and these are unconventional materials. People put tarps over their wood piles or under their tents. During Katrina, they were all over New Orleans,” Chambers said of her naming philosophy. “Tarpitos and tarpitios come from Spanish and my time going to school in Spain.”
Chambers’ artistic spirit was formed throughout her life by exposure to a myriad of cultures, colors and creatives from around the world. Her father was a Navy pilot, and she lived in Europe for several years of her childhood. When her family moved to San Diego, she took frequent trips to Tijuana. As an adult, she lived in New Orleans, Seattle, Queens (New York), Woodstock (Illinois) and Boise (Idaho) before moving to Milwaukee’s Bay View neighborhood.
“We traveled all the time, and wherever we went, it was the bright, colorful things that attracted me,” she said. “But honestly, the city that has impacted me the most is New Orleans. There’s so much culture, so much color. It was there that this all gelled for me.”
After settling in Milwaukee, Chambers was gifted a secondhand dollhouse. She covered it in her signature tarpage iconography and from there, a new medium of exploration took shape. Two of these “small houses,” as she calls them, will be on display during the MKE Studio Tour.
In the coming months, Chambers looks to the future, hoping to begin showing her tarpages throughout Milwaukee in public installations or gallery settings.
The MKE Studio Tour on Oct. 3-4 will be open from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. both days. Learn about the tour, Chambers and other participating artists on the MKE Studio Tour website.
